The Bloodsucker of Beantown
by captmurdock
Summary: Maura's not feeling great in the wake of recent events (ref. 4x04). Unfortunately, she and Jane have a very unusual case to deal with...and the inevitable reactions from their colleagues and the public. This was something they NEVER trained for. EDIT: Yes, Rizzles!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: **I do not own these characters, I'm just borrowing them for a while.

**Note: **This story is not in the "Supernatural" category/genre for a reason. I'm actually lifting the general idea of this story from an episode of an old cop show (a Mighty Marvel No-Prize to the first one who guesses which old cop show). What can I say - talent borrows, genius steals; I get it off the back of a truck, no questions asked.

I'm relatively new to R&I, and I haven't seen every episode, so I hope I'm getting these characters right.

* * *

Shirley Beckwith never expected to die in such a ludicrous manner.

She walked quickly across the parking PO on the last night of her life, grumbling about another late night at the office instead of having a drink with friends in one of the many nearby bars. Company cutbacks meant fewer people to handle more work for the same money, if they were lucky.

Shirley didn't feel lucky. She felt watched.

In spite of the lights from the Boston skyline, the parking lot could have been a lot brighter for Shirley's taste. As she walked, she fumbled in her purse for her keys and the pepper spray she wasn't sure she packed in there that morning.

_Finally._ Her old-but-trusty Nissan appeared out of the gloom. Her keys finally in hand, she gave up in the pepper spray and concentrated on getting the correct key in the door, cursing herself for the hundredth time for not springing for one of the automatic unlocking button thingies. She had the door key in the lock when she spotted the reflection in the window that wasn't hers.

Spinning around with a gasp, she froze - not merely because the figure was charging towards her, but because it was wearing some kind of long coat... Or cape.

Shirley's last coherent thought before the hand closed on her throat was _Are you kidding me?_

* * *

Jane Rizzoli knew she was in for a rough day as soon as she saw the UPS truck in front of Maura's house.

"Ohhh, brother." For a fleeting second, she contemplated just putting the car in reverse and just heading straight to BPD headquarters. Before the impulse fully formed, however, Jane had already parked and was walking to the front door. _No use putting off this dentist trip. _

After a perfunctory knock, Jane opened the door and called out, "Maura?" Hearing her friend answer with a greeting, Jane walked into the living room - and stopped dead in her tracks at the sight.

Maura Isles, M.E., stood holding a samurai sword. Strewn around the living room were several other lethal implements: bo staffs, short swords similar in style to the samurai; nunchakus, sais, even a brace of throwing stars. The remnants of several cardboard boxes also littered the living room.

Jane forced a smile on her face as Maura beamed at her like a kid on Christmas morning (_in Japan, maybe). _"Good morning, Jane," Maura said, warmly enough but subdued In that certain way that only Jane could discern. "I'll be ready in a few minutes."

"For what? An attack from Sonny Chiba?"

Maura frowned. "I don't know anybody by that name." She swung her sword in a slow arc, releasing a _hah!_ of air. Jane stepped back, semi-seriously fearing for her life. "There's coffee made already," she continued, altering her stance and swinging the sword over her head, apparently preparing to decapitate an invisible enemy.

Keeping a wary eye on her best friend, who had evidently gone over the Brink of Madness into the Abyss Below, Jane found the travel mug she favoured in the cabinet. Thankfully, Maura had already performed her morning coffee porn ritual with her Rube Goldberg devices; Jane was therefore not obligated to fill her mug from the instant coffee she kept putting in Maura's cupboards on the sly.

"Uh, Maura?" Jane began, trying to sound casual as she saw the medical examiner put down the sword and pick up the bo staff. "What's with the Bruce Lee collection?"

Maura shrugged as she experimentally twirled the staff like a spastic majorette. The fact that she was in her usual dressed-to-kill outfit (minus her high heels) made her fighting stance just that much more ludicrous. "I just thought I'd upgrade my home defense a little," she offhandedly answered.

"Who are you expecting to rob your place," Jane replied, caught in the twilight zone between bemusement and exasperation, "the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?"

"Tortoises," Maura corrected by rote, but Jane could tell her heart was not in the badinage. As if the slightly manic-depressive shopping spree was not already a clue, the detective knew her friend was upset.

It had only been a couple of weeks since Maura had been accused of murder, arrested by her best friend, "ratted out" by the woman she thought of as a second (or third?) mother, and clocked by a vengeful inmate. This, coupled with the impending trial of her biological father on RICO charges, and the strained relationship Maura had with her biological mother and half-sister, had been wearing down the M.E.'s _joi de vivre. _

Jane had done her level best to cheer Maura up, be the sympathetic ear and the shoulder to cry on. Her love for this woman, this sister she had never had and had not known she had wanted until she came skidding into Jane's life, was unabated; nevertheless, her cheerleader pom-poms were getting a little frayed. Despite her wealthy upbringing, Maura's life had never been easy, relationships had never been her strong suit, and she seemed to carry an underlying conviction that she was unworthy of love and affection. Sometimes, Jane felt she was rolling an ever-growing boulder up an increasingly-steep hill.

Taking a deep breath, Jane pushed away her irritation. How many times had Maura picked _her_ up and glued _her _back together? How many wounds, professional and personal, had Maura put Band-Aids and kisses on? Way too many for the detective to count.

Leaving her travel mug on the kitchen counter, Jane walked back over to Maura (though keeping a prudent distance from the swinging bo staff). "Honey, look, when we have a little time, we'll put on our sweats and review some self-defense techniques. But really…"

"Jane!" Maura glared, throwing down the bo staff, causing Jane to leap back hurriedly. "I've done self-defense training, and I still got punched in the face by an inmate!" She unconsciously brushed her cheek where she had had to apply extra foundation for two weeks until the bruising went away.

"You got sucker-punched, Maura. It happens," Jane said, trying to keep a sympathetic tone in her voice. "You think it hasn't happened to me? I'm a trained, experienced police officer, and I still sometimes get taken by surprise! I know Korsac, Frost and Frankie have, too. Hell, between Hoyt and Dominic, I may never climb into an ambulance or a van as long as I live!"

Her attempt at self-directed humor may as well have been directed at the Statue of Liberty for all the results it brought. Maura picked up the nunchakus and twirled them dangerously (though not actually, deliberately at Jane, who backed up another step). "That inmate, the one who 'sucker-punched' me… it didn't matter to her that I graduated college while most people my age were still in high school! My degrees, my knowledge, my skills – they were useless when it came to stopping a blow to my zygomatic arch!" Maura's voice rose, her eyes growing wide as she twirled the nunchakus faster. Jane wasn't sure who she was more worried about.

"She probably never graduated high school, and couldn't name all the bones in the human body to save her life," Maura continued in full rant mode, "but she sure as hell was able to take down a Qualified Medical Examiner with _**one punch!" **_At the end of her spiel, she blindly swung the nunchakus – right into an alabaster sculpture. The abstract piece was made much more abstract as it disintegrated into abstract little pieces.

Jane stifled the squeal that came unbidden behind the cupped hand over her mouth. She feared that, any second, she was going to start laughing, which would be disastrous for her relationship with Maura.

For her part, Maura stood gazing at the result of her ire, spread out over her hardwood floor. After about ten seconds, she carefully set the nunchakus down on the table. Looking at Jane, she shrugged and said wryly, "I never liked that piece anyway."

The detective nodded slowly. "Yeah, I can see that. So, are you going for your black belt in feng shui?" She waggled her eyebrows and grinned at Maura.

"No," Maura replied, the corners of her mouth twitching upward, "but I do have a brown belt in broom-and-dustpan."

The laughter between the two friends was interrupted by Jane's phone buzzing. At nearly the same time, Maura's phone buzzed from the kitchen counter.

_And our day begins… _Jane thought as she pulled her phone off her belt. "Rizzoli," she answered, absently noting Maura answering her phone as perfunctorily. It was Frost, telling her that there was a woman found dead next to her parked car, COD unknown at present. He sent her the address via text message. Jane replied that she would be there ASAP.

Parking her phone back on her belt, Jane saw Maura, once again all-business, grab their travel mugs and her handbag, and walk over to Jane. "Let me get my shoes on. Do you mind if I ride over with you? I don't feel up to driving right now."

"Not at all," Jane said, shrugging. "After all, I may need you to protect me from a surprise attack by Jean-Claude Van Damme."

"Funny, and not at all inappropriate."

"Sarcasm, Doctor Isles?"

"Sarcasm? Moi?"

* * *

The uniforms had cordoned off the crime scene expertly, leaving the more technical aspects of the investigation to be done by "the big money" as Jane would sardonically put it. Frost and Korsac were already there; the latter waggled his eyebrows as the two women approached.

"Ah, the star pupil!" Korsac cooed affectionately as his former protégé and partner. Jane's answering jab to his solar plexus was equally affectionate. Maura exchanged greetings with both men and knelt down to look at the body.

"Shirley Beckwith, age 31, apparently worked in that building there," Korsac indicated by pointing, "this car here is registered to her. Doesn't look like she made it inside. Unmarried, no kids."

Jane frowned. "That was a fast I.D."

Frost held up the woman's purse, already in an evidence bag. "Purse was right next to the body. Cash, credit cards, all still inside. Also pictures, but none are of kids, so…"

"So much for robbery-gone-bad," Jane mused. "Huh. Even if this was a murder for personal reasons, you'd think the perp would have snagged the cash or whatever to make it _look _like a robbery."

Korsac nodded. "Spouse is usually the first suspect. In this case, boyfriend, or maybe girlfriend. Hmm. Let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Right." Jane took a quick look at the body laying on the ground beside Maura. Strangely, it looked rather peaceful; if not for the unhealthy pallor of the skin, it looked as if the woman just decided to take an impromptu nap. "So, find anything?"

Maura's usual all-business demeanour was underscored by genuine puzzlement. "Liver temperature indicates time of death between 10 and 11 PM last night. Ordinarily I would say she was killed here, but…"

"…But?"

"Here, turn her over." Jane, having already put on gloves, helped Maura turn the body on its side. Lifting up the blouse, Maura pointed to the back. "There's no lividity."

Jane's brow furrowed at this. Blood should have pooled at the lowest point; the back should have been purple. But it was the same pale color as the woman's face. "So she was killed elsewhere and brought here?"

Maura shook her head. "I don't know. All I know is, I can't find any lividity anywhere on the body."

"So she bled out?" Jane looked around at the crime scene, the pavement, the car next to them. "Well, then, where's the blood? And where did she bleed out from?" Even the woman's clothing seemed to be free of blood.

"Five quarts of human blood just does not disappear, Jane," Maura admonished absently as she closely examined the body for wounds that she might have missed before.

"Gee, that goes in the Duuuuuhh! Category."

Maura was too busy to really register Jane's quip, moving the collar of the woman's blouse aside to reveal… "Hello…"

"'Hello' what? 'Hello' who?" Jane leaned over to peer at what Maura found on the victim's neck.

"Two puncture marks," Maura announced, for the benefit of absolutely no one, as Jane was looking right at them, "approximately five centimeters apart, which appear at first glance to pierce the carotid artery." Maura sat back on her heels and looked over at Jane in amazement. "This type of wound…"

"Maura…" Jane looked at her friend sternly. "Do not even say the 'V' word!"

"What 'V' word are you two talking about?" inquired Frost, who sauntered over to see what the detective and the doctor were discussing so intently.

"I think she means 'vampire', Detective Frost," Maura supplied helpfully, leaving Jane wanting to bang a head (not necessarily her own) against the pavement.

"You have got to be _kidding _me," Jane moaned, to no one in particular.

* * *

**So? Like it so far? I hope to have the next chapter up soon!**


	2. Chapter 2

**Again, the usual disclaimers apply. Plus, I'm not a doctor, so any liberties taken with medical science are purely accidental.**

* * *

At the morgue, Maura exchanged her Cassandra Strickenberg ensemble for black scrubs and began her detailed examination of the body. Jane dutifully snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and attended, which was a fancy way of saying that she stood by while Maura pondered the which-ness of who and the why-ness of what. The M.E. scrutinized the corpse in such minute detail that Jane had to consciously refrain from grinding her teeth.

Finally, Maura moved up to the neck, swinging the magnifier over the puncture marks. She used a dermatome to gently enlarge the wounds. Jane, her patience waning, coughed ostentatiously. Her only response from the honey-blonde was a "Really?" and a raised eyebrow.

"Maura, by the time you call COD, we could have a legion of the undead roaming Boston!"

"Jane…"

"The puncture wounds are cause-of-death, right?"

"Wrong." Maura crooked a finger at her confused friend and pointed not to the side of the neck, but the front. "Strangulation. There's bruising on the neck that's consistent, although it's far less evident due to the massive amount of blood loss. Also," she added, peeling back an eyelid, "petechial haemorrhaging, also subdued but present. The puncture wounds are post-mortem, although probably no more than a minute due the very low levels of serotonin and free histamines."

Jane nodded. This was very illuminating. "So…she didn't die from being bitten in the neck, then."

"She wasn't bitten on the neck, Jane. This is not a vampire attack." Maura had the audacity to look smug at this pronouncement.

"Awww, I was so hoping to meet Buffy and Willow and Giles!" Jane whined mockingly. "Thank you, Doctor Smartypants, I know there are no such things as vampires!"

Maura blinked, a sure and deadly sign that Google Mouth was about to commence. "Well, granted, there has never been any documented proof of vampires, as detailed in medieval lore; however, given the logical near-impossibility of proving a negative, we can't be 100% certain that certain meta-human creatures of this sort don't exist somewhere in the world."

Caught between the sensation of her eyes glazing over and an unexpected but welcome burst of deep affection for her friend, Jane shook her head, her curly dark locks cascading over her face. "Okay, ahem, can we get back to the part where we know – wait a minute." A sudden thought made Jane switch mental tracks. "What about that disease that made people think they were vampires, or made other people think those people were vampires?"

"Porphyria. It's a blood disorder, ironically enough, that causes certain pigmentation disorders, and in extreme cases can cause aversion to sunlight and a gaunt appearance to give a somewhat inhuman aspect. The disease, in certain case, can cause shrinkage of periodontal tissue," Maura bared her teeth to demonstrate, "that would give the appearance of elongated teeth."

"Right, right. So maybe one of these people bit her, y'know, in some diseased, I don't know…" Jane was fishing and she knew it.

Maura shook her head firmly. "She wasn't bitten. The puncture marks are not made from teeth, or fangs if you prefer. There wasn't a trace of saliva on the neck, and I don't think anybody, vampire or human, could bite someone anywhere on the body and not leave saliva." She played the magnifier over the neck wounds again. "I'd have to run a culture to be sure, but I doubt there are any microorganisms from oral epithelium in the wounds. You know, the human mouth is one of the dirtiest places, microbiologically speaking, in the world."

"You remind me of Ma, right before she would grab the bar of Ivory for my latest case of Potty Mouth," Jane commented wryly, rewarding by a smile from Maura. "So the perp strangles her, then punctures her neck with a two-pronged instrument of some kind, then… Somehow extracts the blood?"

"Residual blood pressure would have facilitated the exsanguination. Maybe the prongs are part of a small pump, similar to what's used in a mortuary prior to the embalming process."

Jane nodded. "That's good. That gives us a place to start: mortuaries, crematories, maybe hospitals? Anything else?"

"Not for right now. Crime techs are going over her clothing. I may have more later."

"Okay." Jane moved to leave the morgue, then crossed back over to Maura. "Look, we didn't get to finish talking about, um," Jane shuffled her feet uncertainly. "I just want to say, if you need to talk…"

"Jane, I'm working," Maura broke in, not unkindly. "This is therapy for me." She spread her hands, indicating the corpse and the examination she needed to continue.

"Okay. I need to head up and see how Korsak and Frost are making out on Shirley Beckwith's background and stuff." Jane refrained from touching the Medical Examiner, as much as she wanted to give the comfort Maura achingly needed, because her friend was in Focus Mode and could be rather irritable. She settled for a nod and smile and headed out, stripping off her gloves.

* * *

Frost and Korsak were hard at work in the Homicide bullpen; Frost was making preparations to track down her financials while Korsak was on the phone getting a warrant to search Beckwith's residence. It was the usual crap-work that gets done by protocol even if it leads nowhere. On Jane's desk were the incident reports and statements from the witnesses who had found the body that morning. The investigation was proceeding normally, if uneventfully.

Frost finished entering requests in his computer and turned to Jane. "So, uh, what did Doctor Isles say? Is this a, uh," he trailed off, making vague gestures around his neck and baring his upper teeth.

_Gawd, this is going to be a long case, I can tell already. _"No, Frost, it's not a vampire. Our victim is not going to rise to walk the night and drink your blood, okay?"

Korsak ended his phone call and sauntered, a bemused smile on his face as he observed the conversation with his younger colleagues. "You think Dr. Isles took the class in vampire anatomy in medical school?" he asked, seeing Frost's grin.

"It's not a – Look, Maura found no evidence that she's actually been bitten – by human, vampire, or puppy. Okay, 'Mulder'? Go search for Bigfoot if you've got nothing better to do."

"Y'know, my grandmamma used to tell me stories about vampires," Korsak said, affecting an atrocious accent and grimacing like an old movie ghoul, "from da old country."

Jane snorted. "'Da old country?' Your grandmother was from Pennsylvania! Seriously, a little respect, guys? A woman's been murdered here."

Frost and Korsak nodded and shifted to being All Business. "I got the warrant to search her place," Korsak said. Frost brought up that he found Shirley Beckwith's place of employment and had compiled a list of colleagues to interview. After a brief confab, it was decided Korsak and Jane would search the home while Frost, along with Frankie Rizzoli, Jane's brother and newly-minted detective, would conduct the interviews at the office where Beckwith worked.

Frankie arrived in the bullpen a couple of minutes after Frost texted him. He sidled up to Jane and murmured in a conspiratorial tone, "So, I hear we have a vampire attack on our hands?" Frost and Korsak silently chuckled; Frost knew that the senior detective had watched as he texted Frankie and clued him in on the "vampire."

Jane gritted her teeth and grabbed her brother's arm. "_It was not a vam—" _She glared at Frost as the young black detective doubled over in laughter. "You guys are hilarious. Listen, you," she snarled, turning back to Frankie, "You breathe one word of this to Ma, I will have you busted to meter maid!"

"Whoa, hey, take it easy," Frankie replied in a placating tone. "You think I want Ma to know you're chasing after the Living Dead?"

The humor of the moment finally caught up to Jane. "Now that I think about it: I think I've _dated _the Living Dead."

* * *

Several hours later, the detectives reconvened in the bullpen, having found nothing of importance. Shirley Beckwith's colleagues reported no trouble at work, no jealous ex-boyfriends, no complaints of stalkers and no connection to odd religious cults, at least as far as anyone knew. Likewise, a search of the modest home revealed no ransacking, no theft, no secret closets filled with bottles of toxic waste or Nazi gold or anything even slighter juicy. Even the trashy bodice-ripper novels Jane found in the nightstand were pretty tame.

Lt. Cavanaugh came in to get an update on the case. His craggy Irish mein was creased with mild irritation. "Detective Rizzoli," he said heavily, "I've heard some… disturbing theories regarding the identity, or rather, species of the killer."

Keeping a respectful tone in her voice, Jane answered her superior. "No one has seriously advanced the idea that this is a real vampire, sir. Obviously, this murder's the work of a deranged human being; Dr. Isles' preliminary findings support this. Her full report should be on your desk soon; I'm sure she's being thorough, otherwise…"

"I'm aware of Dr. Isles' propensity for exacting detail," Cavanaugh replied, not with a wry undertone. "So are we looking at murder for personal reasons, disguised as an insane attack?"

The detectives filled Cavanaugh in on their findings. "I've gone through the financial data we got back from the requests," Frost added, transferring the data to his screen and cycling through pages of data. "Seems pretty standard so far: checking, savings, credit cards. Paid her bills on time. A small life insurance policy; the beneficiary is her mother, who lives in Massapequa. I still have a few things to check, but as far as I can see so far, nobody stood to make any money off Shirley Beckwith's death."

The sound of stiletto heels heralded Maura's arrival in the bullpen. "Hello, detectives, lieutenant," she greeted professionally. She passed the folder in her hands over to Jane. "My full report. Pretty much as I said: she died of strangulation, and then her blood was removed post-mortem."

"No fingerprints or blood?" Cavanaugh asked.

Maura shook her head. "He took the time to eliminate any traces, which supports my one of my surprising findings: she was moved to another location, then moved back to approximately where she died."

Jane's brow furrowed as she pondered this. "How can you tell?"

"For one thing, the equipment used to exsanguinate the body simply couldn't be carried around. Second, the tech found traces of chemicals on her clothing that could not be found in the parking lot, and I doubt they could have been transferred to her from her office, unless she works in some kind of laboratory…"

"Nope, insurance underwriting firm," Frost replied. "What kind of chemicals?"

"Not sure yet. The techs are running it through analysis; the traces are very small. But here's the other thing I found." Maura held up the small evidence bag she carried in her other hand. Jane took it and held it up to the light; the small piece of thread inside was almost invisible. "I found it snagged on one of her fingernails; it was probably torn off the killer's…"

Jane stared at Maura; it was very unlike the medical examiner to trail off like that. Frost, Korsak, Frankie and Cavanaugh likewise waited for Maura to go on.

So, what is this?" Jane shook the baggie and peered at the thread. "Wool?"

Maura nodded. "Yes. A very fine grade of wool. It's used primarily to make…" She took a very uncharacteristic breath, "…opera cloaks."

Frost went wide-eyed. "You mean…capes."

Cavanaugh closed his eyes in exasperation. Jane sank back into her chair. "Ohhhh, _swell_."

* * *

**Okay so far? **


	3. Chapter 3

**Thanks for all the follows and reviews! In response to several inquiries: yes, there will be Rizzles in this story. I'm trying to work it in naturally; I happen to think that Maura's recent traumatic experience might be the catalyst to the final breakdown of barriers between our favorite ladies. Anyway, patience is a virtue. ;-)**

**ETA: I made a few minor edits after I initially posted this up. My wife is my beta reader.**

* * *

The detectives, plus Dr. Isles, who had changed back into her peach blouse and Cassandra Strickenberg skirt, reconvened in Cavanaugh's office to discuss the case further with a minimum of unnecessary ears listening in. Frankie in particular seemed excited to be working a real homicide case, fairly vibrating in place as he stood amongst the senior investigators.

Lt. Cavanaugh had the air of a man who had inadvertently sucked an entire lemon slice down with his iced tea. "Dr. Isles, it's your theory that the…perpetrator moved Ms. Beckwith after she was dead, drained her blood somehow, then moved her back to where he killed her?"

Korsac broke in, scratching his salt-and-pepper goatee. "Everything else indicates that she was killed where she was found. Her body was right next to her car, which had been in the parking lot since yesterday morning when she arrived for work; her purse was on the pavement right beside her body. She was seen leaving her office a little before ten p.m., less than two hundred yards from her car."

Jane was searching through the crime scene photos. "I did think at the time she seemed awfully composed… Here." She laid one particular shot down on Cavanaugh's desk. "Strangulation's a pretty violent way to die, and yet she looks pretty peaceful. I think Maura's right: he took her someplace, probably really close, drained her dry and then brought her back. Maybe this equipment Maura's talking about was only a short distance away.

"Are we talking about a van or a panel truck?" Frost asked.

Jane rolled her eyes. "Oh, God, not another van…"

"_Steady_," Frankie said out of the side of his mouth to his older sister.

Cavanaugh looked at her sharply, then nodded in understanding. "Right. I understand your personal history with that sort of thing." He exhaled, then turned back to Maura. "This wool you found – is it only used in the making of…opera cloaks?"

"You mean 'capes'," Frost said, not quite quietly enough for Cavanaugh to not shoot him a dirty look. His dark face paled slightly.

"Its heavy construction doesn't quite lend itself to use in more standard clothing, like suits and dresses," Maura answered. "My father had a similar one he used to wear to the Boston Symphony Orchestra when I was a child. I always thought he looked so dashing in it…"

"Any insight," Cavanaugh broke in, "as to why this subject would wear … an opera cloak?"

Maura blinked and shuffled her feet, a sure sign she was on very uncertain ground. The four detectives surreptitiously eyed the medical examiner, wondering what limb she was going to go out on and how far. "I…really couldn't say, Lieutenant."

The lieutenant mustered all the patience he could. "Could you possibly take a guess, Doctor?"

Jane had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling; Maura Isles would sooner do a strip tease at the Dirty Robber than take a guess. Jane had to admit that the mental image of the medical examiner doing a bump-and-grind was a pleasant one – _And where the hell did _that _thought come from?_

Maura looked as if blood was rushing away from her brain at breakneck speed. She finally managed to stammer out, "Uh, f-for dramatic effect?" Korsak took only token pains to hide his amusement, while both Frost and Frankie hid chuckles behind ostentatious coughs. "Well, Lieutenant, I'm a medical examiner, not a psychiatrist or a profiler." The coughing only got louder, then a "Dammit, Jim!" was heard from party or parties unknown…

"Enough!" Cavanaugh barked, which prompted Jane to shove her naughty thoughts to the back of her head. He briefly looked towards the ceiling in a give-me-strength gesture, then focused his gaze on the detectives, who pulled themselves into something resembling an at-attention stance. "This case just might get out to the press. Hopefully not, but these days, it's highly likely. I had better not have any officer in my command utter the 'V' word in public or use it in internal memoranda."

Korsak, the senior of the detectives, had the temerity to push the envelope one last time. "What 'V' word, sir? Valentine?"

"Volcano?" Frost chimed in.

"Vomit?" Jane drawled.

Frankie opened his mouth to stick his two cents in; Cavanaugh stopped him cold with a pointed finger and a "Don't.

"Keep it up, Detectives," Cavanaugh continued, not without an amused glint in his eye, "I'm sure the Burglary Division would _love _to have such fast and ready wit transferred there on a permanent basis!"

Jane shuddered inwardly; Burglary was filled mostly with old guys short-timing it till retirement. The most excitement she could expect in that law-enforcement hellhole was a flat tire on her unmarked car.

Satisfied that he had cowed his unruly subordinates, Cavanaugh nodded. "Keep working the leads and keep me apprised. Dismissed…Sergeant Korsak, a minute more, if you please."

Shooting Korsak a you're-in-trouble-now glance, Jane strode out of Cavanaugh's office and back to the bullpen. Frost and Frankie took the opportunity, out of Cavanaugh's line-of-sight, to laugh in earnest. Maura, self-appointed hall-monitor-in-chief, glared at her friends and colleagues. "You three should be ashamed of yourselves. A woman has been murdered, and _this _is how you act?"

Jane could sympathize with the medical examiner's ire; she knew how seriously Maura took her role as "speaker for the dead." Still, she reflected, Maura knew that dark humor was just a coping mechanism the homicide detectives used to keep themselves able to do the job.

"You're right, Maura," Jane averred, unable to resist getting in a little dig. "We should refrain from disrespectful displays as, oh, I don't know…comparing a collection of prison-made shivs to _Project: Runway?"_

Maura gave Jane her stand-by retort for such remarks: narrowed eyes and silence.

* * *

For the rest of the day shift, Jane and her colleagues were concerned with the necessary, if tedious, drudgery that homicide detectives are required to perform: sifting through the crap to find the gold nuggets leading to an arrest. After Korsak returned from the perfunctory ass-chewing given him by Lt. Cavanaugh, he led the detectives through the trail of evidence, such as it was. Although there was no video surveillance in place in the parking lot were Shirley Beckwith was killed, there was some on the surrounding streets. Collecting the footage, and sorting through it to find a van that might have been used by the killer to house the equipment he needed to extract the blood, would take hours.

Jane went back to the photos taken at the scene, hoping to find such a van, even though it was highly unlikely that it would still be there several hours after the murder. She was proven right.

_Still_… "Korsak, is the parking lot around where Beckwith was killed still roped off?" Jane called to the sergeant, putting the crime scene photos back into the folder on her desk.

Korsak nodded. "What's up?"

"I'm thinking it's just possible we might get some tire tracks of any van or panel truck that the killer might be driving." Jane was already clipping her cell phone, badge and gun to her hip, ready to head over to the crime scene.

"On that pavement? I doubt it, but it's worth a look. Not by you," he said, staring Jane down as she was shrugging into her blazer. "Uniforms can drive by and look for any tire tracks, give us a call if they find anything. You've been at this all day, Jane. Time to knock off."

The lanky brunette bristled, but it was only a token protest. Her eyes were tired, and getting some rest before diving back into the investigation sounded like an extremely good idea at that moment. "Yeah. Okay. Let me punch up the request to Dispatch and then I'll get out of here."

Frost stood up and stretched, rolling his shirt cuffs back down and putting on his jacket. "Yes, ma'm. What's the game plan now? Drinks at the Dirty Robber? I'll call Frankie…"

"Nah, it's a school night," Jane said, smiling. "I should go home, walk Jo Friday, see if my mountains of laundry have had the heart to put themselves away. I'm just going to see what Maura's up to. See ya tomorrow."

Jane walked out, nodding at the good-nights from Korsak and Frost. As she went out the door towards the elevator down to the morgue, she didn't see the significant looks between her colleagues, as well as Korsak tapping his left ring finger with his right forefinger. Frost mouthed, rather unnecessarily, "Married!" They both snickered.

* * *

Maura was in her office, surrounded by her tribal masks, odd knickknacks and esoteric medical texts, reading intently from her laptop when Jane found her. "Working hard or hardly working?" Jane asked, knowing that Maura was likely perusing an online shoe catalog.

The honey-blonde medical examiner dimpled and turned the laptop around so Jane could read the screen. **The Fearful Fascination of Vampire Lore**, a webpage from the American Psychological Association, gleamed on the screen. From the number of browser tabs in the background, Jane could see that this was far from the only page Maura had been reading.

"Trying to get an insight on our killer," Jane averred, "or are you developing some fun new fetish?"

Maura turned the laptop back around and clicked on another page. "Did you know—"

"Three words that strike terror in my heart."

"—that vampires, in some form or other, are mythologized in virtually every culture on Earth? Long before Bram Stoker wrote _Dracula, _mythical creatures who consumed the blood of the living were the stuff of legend all over the world."

Jane nodded, bemused for the thousandth time by the trivia that could pour from Maura's mouth. "Did any of these stuffed legends sparkle in the daylight?"

Maura frowned. "Regardless of any recent trashy literature written to appeal to teenage girls, vampires have fascinated scholars for centuries. The need for blood, the living outside of society's norms…"

"…The need to dress up in opera capes," replied Jane. "Maura, does any of this have insight as to how we are going to catch this weirdo?"

"I doubt it," said Maura as she shut her laptop and gathered her purse. "We may have to see what additional forensic evidence turns up."

Jane shook her head. "We may not have that kind of time before Count Dumbass strikes again."

"You really think this person is going to go after somebody else?" Maura frowned as she got her jacket off the back of her chair and slipped into it. "Another woman? Why?"

Jane gave her friend a world-weary look. "Because weirdos like these are never satisfied with just one. It's like potato chips…really…_icky…_potato chips."

"Well, if this individual is drinking the blood he took from Shirley Beckwith, it would be even more unhealthy for him than potato chips. Talk about salt content—"

Jane winced as she and Maura left the office and headed for the elevators. "Alright, enough with the _Euwww, _please? I want to be able to enjoy rare steak sometime in the near future." Punching the up button that would take them to the lobby, Jane had another thought: "Hang on…this guy has a jones to dress up like Bela Legosi, swoop down, attack women and all that...but he went to a lot of trouble to collect a huge amount of blood."

"Nearly four quarts," Maura confirmed.

"Right," Jane countered, "so, what's he doing with it?"

Maura's mouth opened, but no answer came out.

* * *

**To be continued!**


	4. Chapter 4

**Thank you all for the follows! I'd like to know how some of you feel I'm doing, whether I'm capturing Jane & Maura's voices or not. And yes, I'm getting to the Rizzles, I'm just taking a little time to work it in naturally.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Harold tentatively approached the tub, where the still, silent figure reposed. He carried a large jar filled nearly full of red fluid with an air of reverence.

"I-I'm here," Harold said to the figure in the tub. She was dressed in a diaphanous gown of white, billowing around her like a shroud. He smiled at her as he approached the tub. "I have it. I have what you need."

The woman stirred, just barely enough to turn her head towards him. "Thank you, Harold. You're a good boy. I know what risks you took for me." Her voice was very quiet; Harold had to strain a bit to hear it.

He hefted the bottle, the blood inside swishing around. "I accepted that willingly. I'll do w-whatever I must…for you. This," he swirled the bottle around again. "is only the beginning. I'm going to get more…tonight."

She seemed disturbed by that. "Already, Harold? You have someone else?"

"I've done my research…by 'research' I mean 'stalking'," Harold laughed nervously, sobering as he realized she didn't share The Funny. "I know this girl, and where she works, and where she usually parks her car. No one will see." He stepped forward, uncapping the bottle and tipping the contents over her. The blood flowed over the woman, staining the white gown as it trickled over her.

As the woman thanked him again, and pleaded Harold to be careful, he could her voice becoming stronger. He hardly noticed the smell at all.

* * *

"Do you want to come over?" asked Maura as Jane drove them both home. It was a little past sunset.

Jane nodded. "Sounds good. I have to pick up Jo Friday – I need to walk her tonight – and a change of clothes for tomorrow."

"Good." Maura's smile pleased Jane. She seemed more like the old, ever-enthusiastic, self-confident Maura than the depressed shell she was this morning. Her keen scientific expertise, stimulated by the unusual circumstances surrounding the Beckwith murder, had likely lifted her mind out of the depths of her doldrums. Jane reflected that if any good could come from a senseless murder, it would be the re-awakening of Maura's sense of self.

At Maura's house, Jane secured her gun and badge in the usual drawer in the kitchen island Maura set aside for her. Maura went to change clothes while Jane took Jo Friday out for "walkies." Fortunately, this was not the terrier's first visit to Maura's neighborhood, so it didn't take long to complete her business.

Maura's recently acquired collection of martial arts weapons were still scattered over the living room; Jane decided on arranging them to one side so that she and Maura could sit on her couch together. Picking up the nunchakus, she looked around to see if Maura had finished changing clothes. Jane swung them experimentally at the air, found the accompanying _whoosh_ satisfying.

_Okay, this is pretty cool. _Jane swung the chucks and even tried the behind-the-shoulder pass she'd seen in Bruce Lee movies. This lasted about fifteen seconds before Jane bopped herself on the head – fortunately not very hard – and spent two minutes trying to discretely find a frozen bag of veggies ("Damn her and her organic co-op!") to put on her head.

"You okay?" Maura inquired as she came into the kitchen, wearing yoga pants and a light teal top, her caramel-blonde hair tied in a loose tail.

Jane smiled while blinking away her watering eyes. "Sure, sure, fine. I'm gonna change." _And see if I can find aspirin in the guest bathroom. Maura should have pills for everything from arthritis to blackwater fever._

After changing into her usual Boston PD t-shirt and sweatpants, Jane joined Maura in her kitchen, where she had opened a bottle of wine and set out a bottle of beer for Jane. Immediately, the detective picked up on the mood shift from her friend; Maura seemed, if not quite morose, then more introspective than before.

Maura opened the refrigerator in preparation for dinner. "I see your mother's been by," the medical examiner remarked dryly as she pulled a large aluminium pan out and set it on the island. Scotch-taped to the lid was a note; Maura pulled it free and opened it to read: "'Dear Maura: I had some leftover lasagna. I brought it over in case you were too tired to cook. Love, Angela'." She pulled off the lid, to reveal the pan to be seven-eighths full of lasagna. Maura raised her eyebrows at Jane. "Leftovers?"

"That's Ma," replied Jane. "Anything worth doing is worth overdoing." She knew Maura had every right to be upset with Angela. If her mother had shown her the video of Maura breaking a board with her elbow, Jane would have done exactly what her mother had guessed: deleted the damn thing. Taking the video to Cavanaugh took the decision out of Jane's hands; it also made Maura look guilty of the murder. Jane had had some choice words for Angela, but Maura had kept quiet, even though Angela's actions had punched a hole in her heart.

Maura regarded the lasagna for several seconds, leaving Jane to wonder if she was going to pitch it into the garbage. Finally Maura sighed, shrugged at her friend, and put the pan in the oven to warm up.

"Have you ever wanted to be a vampire?"

Maura's question caught Jane right in the middle of a mouthful of beer; only iron control, and long experience with Maura's complete lack of brain-to-mouth filtration system, kept her from doing a classic spit-take. "Uh, gee, no," she finally answered after swallowing carefully. "Vampire…not especially. I do remember wanting to be James Bond for a while."

Maura sat down on a chair next to the kitchen island. "I sometimes thought it would be interesting to be a vampire. More interesting than being _me, _the girl who was so boring nobody wanted to be around her."

Jane shook her head, then leaned over and wrapped an arm around her friend's shoulder. "That's not you anymore, Maura. Just because a bunch of boarding-school bitches didn't have the brains to keep up with you, that doesn't mean they get to define _you_ for the rest of your life."

Maura smiled and leaned into Jane slightly. "The most attractive quality of being a vampire, I would think, would be immortality. The downside…" Maura took a deep breath that Jane thought was a hairsbreadth away from being a sob. "…is that I'd have to spend eternity alone."

"Nahhhh…you could bite me, make me a vampire," Jane quipped, trying to lighten Maura's mood, rubbing Maura's shoulder. "I'd hang out with you for five, six centuries at least." She felt Maura softly chuckle against her shoulder.

"At least I won't have to worry about guys like Brad," muttered Maura.

"O-okay." Jane released her hold on Maura and leaned against the counter, whipping her best interrogation glare. "Now we're getting down to the smoking gun here. You're all mad and depressed about the guy who conned you, blew scopolamine in your face, made you into Zombie Lady so he could steal evidence from your morgue…"

"And managed to get himself killed, nearly framing me in the process," finished Maura.

Jane blinked, and then gamely plunged back in. "Well, maybe he didn't sign off on that… Maura, he was a professional con man. He researched your background and said all the right things to get you to leave that fundraiser with him."

Maura stood and walked past the island, her jaw muscles working. "The first guy who's interested in me in months, turns out it's only because he's trying to break into my morgue! Before that, there was Dennis, who was encasing women alive in plaster because of his outstanding Oedipal issues!"

_Let's not forget dear old Ian, _Jane thought, _who blows into town just long enough to "midnight requisition" some medical supplies, and incidentally make bouncy-bouncy with you. _She clamped down hard on that thought; articulating that now would do nothing good for Maura's state of mind.

"My love-life isn't exactly great, either, Maura," Jane finally countered. "In fact, it would make the Lifetime Network vomit. Casey comes to town, just after the surgery that might have killed him, spends one night with me, wham bam thank you Jane, then goes back to Afghanistan!" She took a long pull on her beer bottle before marshalling another argument. "Besides that, there's the invisible sign on my head that only serial killers and nutballs can see. If it's not Hoyt pinning me like a butterfly," Jane waved her scarred hand around, "it's Dominic who can apparently lure me to captivity with the offer of free ciabatta bread!"

In spite of herself, Maura could not entirely stifle the laughter that burst forth at Jane's soliloquy. Trying to cover up her laughs with a quick cough, she said breathlessly, "—sorry, I'm sorry, Jane. It-It's not funny, not—" Maura forced herself to take a couple of deep breaths as Jane rolled her eyes in indignation. "Um, maybe next time a crazed maniac wants you, hold out for some prosciutto!"

Jane stared at Maura for a second before bursting into laughter along with her. The two women collapsed on the couch, trying not to spill their drinks. After half a minute, they finally managed to regain control. Jane turned to Maura, who was still giggling a little. "'Prosciutto' – that was _good."_

"It wasn't too tacky?" Maura turned to face her slightly. "I can never tell with these things."

Jane reached out to squeeze Maura's knee. "Don't worry about it, honey, it's worth some…um, 'tack', I guess…it's worth it to hear you _laugh _again." At Maura's querical look, Jane pressed on: "Y'know, you always go on about the benefits of sex and the immune goblins it releases and all that, but I'll take a good laugh over sex any…well, almost any day."

Maura considered this. "Laughter does release many endorphins, specifically—"

"Now I _know _you're feeling better."

Maura's cellphone let out a buzz, interrupting their banter. Maura walked over to the island where she had left it, reading the text message there. "The lab finally identified the chemical trace on Shirley Beckwith's clothes. It's heparin."

"Heparin. Wait. Don't tell me," Jane's face scrunched up in concentration as she tried to remember one of Maura's many autopsy lectures. "Anti-coagulant?"

"Very good, Jane!" Maura said brightly, pleased that her star pupil had jumped another hurdle. "This is fascinating. Our subject obviously doesn't want the blood coagulating prematurely…"

"…so he _is _doing something with it," said Jane, picking up the thought. "This also means he has some medical knowledge – oh, God, tell me it's not another one of Hoyt's apprentices…"

"No," Maura replied firmly. "Hoyt's been dead almost two years – this couldn't be someone he recruited. Also, while heparin might be of therapeutic value to a living patient, I don't know what good it would do mixed with exsanguinated blood."

Jane shrugged; this stuff was way out of her ballpark. "All right…make sure Korsak and Frost are flagged on that, we'll run it down tomorrow." She sat back on the couch and upended her beer bottle, surprised to find it empty.

Maura pulled the warmed-up lasagna from the oven, dished some onto plates and brought it into the living room, along with a fresh beer for Jane.

"Did you know: in China, vampires are supposed to hop?" This time, Maura took the courtesy of waiting until Jane swallowed her first mouthful of beer before dropping the info-bomb. "It has something to do with the fact that Chinese vampires are not related to the bat, as in many European vampires, but to frogs."

"Frogs," Jane repeated dully. Her mind was overcome with the ridiculous image of a man dressed in elegant clothes, complete with cape, bloody fangs protruding from his mouth, approaching her in a menacing fashion…by doing the bunny-hop. On top of everything else she had encountered that day, it was almost too much. "Okay, no. I cannot deal with this right now. Please tell me you have something on your DVR besides a documentary on the life-cycle of Chilean sea-bass."

Maura smiled, picking up her remote. "I have just the thing: a whole season of _Mythbusters! _You can even play 'peanut gallery' if you want."

Jane grinned back. "You're a good friend."

* * *

**Next chapter: the beginning of some Rizzles, and some action! No, not ****_that _****kind of action; this is a cop show, y'know!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Thank you again for the follows and the reviews! I would have completed this chapter a couple of days ago, but I was trying to get the right tone for the conversation between J & M. Also, the tragic news of Lee Thompson Young's death threw me for a bit of a loop. My sincerest condolences to his family and friends.**

**ETA: After the Mrs. read it, I decided it needed a little more on Jane's rumination about her relationship with Maura. I hope you like it.**

* * *

Two hours, several experiments, many derisive comments from Jane regarding the size of explosions and two funny voices from Adam Savage later, Jane and Maura were still on the couch together, the caramel-blonde medical examiner having snuggled up next to, and partially on, the brunette detective. Exactly how they had ended up in this rather intimate position, neither of them could have said.

For her part, Jane certainly didn't mind. The three days that Maura had been in jail under suspicion of murder were the longest of Jane's life. She never knew how much she missed "ol' Google Mouth" until she couldn't drop by for a visit without passing security checkpoints. The sight of the self-assured, ultra-competent Maura looking so small and vulnerable in that orange jumpsuit, with the bruise on her cheek, was enough to make Jane cry behind the locked door of her apartment, when her steely resolve to clear her friend's name succumbed to despair. Now she reveled in the soft skin next to her own, the scent of lavender and hyacinth and something uniquely Maura.

As Jane unconsciously tightened the arm around Maura's torso, feeling her friend's slowing breaths as she pirouetted in the no-man's land between wakefulness and sleep, the detective let her mind drift away from the televised wacky science and turn inward.

_When did I start to fall in love with Maura? _This was the first time she had truly asked herself this question when not alone in her bed at the dark hours of the morning, hearing only the sounds of her own heartbeat, not truly awake and therefore leaving her conscious mind the option of Plausible Deniability. The question kept coming back, a cold-case file that refused to stay in the junk drawer of her mind.

She remembered the first tug of affection, when she saw the awkwardness and vulnerability beneath the polished facade of the deliberately quirky medical examiner. An outsider all her life, Maura had decided to not only march to the beat of her own drum, but to lead the parade from the front. For all her quiet, unassuming demeanor, her fashion statements blared out that she was going to perform this job _her _way, dammit, and to hell with what anybody else thought. Jane admired her for her seeming confidence. But it was the almost-hidden flinch, when one of the uniforms called her "Queen of the Dead" not quite out of earshot, that pierced Jane's heart, and formed her resolve to always have Maura's back. Their tentative first steps at friendship, paved with shared experiences on the job, occasionally hobbled by irritation with each other's quirk, led them to being virtually inseparable.

_But when did it become more than that? _Was it as recent as the incident in lockup, knowing that the vagaries of Blind Justice could entail never seeing her again? Or was it much further back – when Charles Hoyt and his prison guard flunkie had captured them both? Jane's terror at being in Hoyt's hands again was burned away by the white-hot fury at seeing Hoyt use the taser on Maura; watching the sick sonofabitch use the scalpel on helpless Maura's neck gave her the strength to overpower the guard and pull Hoyt off. Grabbing the scalpel, she swore then and there Hoyt would never hurt anyone – hurt _Maura _– again, and to hell with the consequences. After it was over, she was able to collapse in Korsak's arms, to let the terror of the encounter out – but it was Maura that she had wanted to embrace, have her tell Jane that everything was okay.

When Dominic had taken Jane and handcuffed her to a bed in a replica of her own bedroom, she had pleaded over the webcam to Frost, the squad's electronics genius, to find her, even as she cursed herself for sounding so weak. In the back of her mind, she hoped it would be Maura coming to her rescue (with full tactical backup, of course), using her patented Cyborg Brain to discern clues from the webcam feed. Chatting on Maura's couch in their informal debriefing, Maura had confirmed that she indeed had made a modest (in her words) contribution. Jane had teared up then and half-sobbed, half-laughed "My hero!"

After Dennis had grabbed Maura and nearly took her with him on his three-story elevator-shaft swan-dive, Jane had held the sobbing, shaken medical examiner, trying not reveal her own shaking knees at the thought of almost losing Maura, again.

But beyond the shared terrors, it was Maura's heart, that had endured loneliness and betrayal and yet still had opened itself to Jane, helped heal the emotional scars that she hid from the world but lay revealed to this brilliant, wonderful, generous oddball, that made Jane yearn for something deeper, more passionate... permanent.

Adam and Jamie became blurry in the middle of setting up another experiment; it took Jane a second to realize that her emotions were overwhelming her. She blinked rapidly, trying to clear her eyes discreetly. Her breath hitched suddenly, out of her control.

Maura sat up. "Jane, what—Your respiratory pattern just changed, are you all right?"

"'m fine, 'm fine," Jane mumbled, wiggled out of their tangle and reaching for the beer bottle on the table (and giving her eyes a quick wipe).

"It's going to be okay, Jane," said Maura, sympathetically touching her arm. "I know they weren't able to replicate the explosion based on the YouTube video, but y'know Adam, he'll want to find a way to make a big boom!"

Jane looked over at Maura incredulously. _Does she really think I'm upset about—_Then the shoe dropped on the other penny, or however that saying went, as the corner of Maura's mouth twitched involuntarily. "You are getting," Jane muttered heavily, "disturbingly good at that."

Maura giggled, but sobered quickly. "Okay, now, will you tell me what's bothering you, please?" She picked up the DVR remote and paused _Mythbusters._

Jane wasn't sure how she would tell Maura of her feelings, how far she should go, or even from what angle she should start.

"You can tell me anything," pressed Maura, closing what little distance the two of them had. "You're my best friend."

Jane blinked: _that _was the hook she'd been looking for. "Yes, yes, you are," she replied, the words tumbling out of her as if she were a gumball machine on the fritz. "You are my best friend, probably the best I've ever had…and…do you ever wonder _why?" _At Maura's askance expression, Jane hastily amended. "I mean, you and me, could we be much different? Okay, we're both born in Boston, and now we both work in law enforcement, but other than that…" She shrugged.

Maura frowned slightly, considering the question. "I _have _wondered about this from time to time," she answered after a few seconds, "mainly why you put with my fastidiousness and my penchant for taking twenty minutes to answer a question—see, I _do _listen when you complain about me. And, I have wondered, on occasion, why I endure your near-complete lack of patience. For someone of your persistence, your fortitude –"

"_Maura! _Are you saying I'm _impatient?" _asked Jane in a faux-horrified tone.

"God forbid you die before I do, because if you did, I'd have them carve 'Are we there yet?' on your tombstone!" Jane laughed at that, but Maura pressed on. "Come on, Jane. You weren't crying a minute ago over the question of why we're best friends. What's on your mind?"

Jane took a deep breath. "You remember you and Tommy?"

Maura nodded ruefully. Jane's younger brother, the "grey sheep" of the Rizzoli family, had developed an infatuation with the medical examiner. Maura did like Tommy, appreciating his blunt mannerisms so reminiscent of Jane, and he was a surprisingly good chess player – a skill he learned from Jane, as it turned out. But Maura spurned his more intimate advances, even though she found qualities in him she found sexually attractive. She had told Jane that she didn't want to make Jane uncomfortable around her and Tommy – _but was that entirely the truth_? she thought to herself.

"You said you and Tommy were attracted to each other," continued Jane, "because you were, you know, opposites, right? It was a genetic …Darwinian, mix-and-match…thing," she finished lamely, having wandering into an intellectual desert.

"I said at the time that it was an evolutionary strategy to ensure healthy reproduction, which made your face look like _that."_

Indeed, Jane's expression was that of someone who had lemon juice squirted in her eye. "Yeah, euww, I remember, but," she licked her lips and looked intently at Maura, "could that…sort of… apply to us?"

"I-I…don't…see how an…evolutionary strategy would pertain to our relationship, as it stands now…" Maura trailed off, as if suddenly realizing a heretofore unknown variable now had a solid constant. She looked at Jane as if seeing her for the first time…or as if seeing her in some way she had never dared to look at her, even in her secret heart.

"Maura?" asked Jane, seeing her friend's bewildered, and somehow enticing, expression. "What…"

A buzz from Jane's cellphone shattered the moment, the two women jumping as if hit with matching tasers. "Oh, _Jesus!" _Jane growled through gritted teeth, snatching the offending phone up and angrily punching the screen to answer the call. "Rizzoli!" she said with a bark that Jo Friday would be proud of.

Maura looked at her phone: no call, meaning it probably wasn't a homicide call. Jane's irritation faded fast as she listened, her jaw dropping slightly. "Really? Where?" Her customary predator smile showed Maura that a break in the case was forthcoming. "Be there as quick as I can, thanks."

"What's going on?"

"Prowler was reported near the corner of Devonshire and Summer – get this," Jane added, shaking Maura's shoulder, "—wearing what looked like a cape!"

"Count Dumbass Strikes Again?" Maura was excited; an opportunity to prevent a murder, unfortunately, came very rarely in their line of work.

"Not if I can help it." Jane was already standing up and heading towards the guest bedroom to change into her slacks, t-shirt and blazer. She dressed in record time, simultaneously excited at the prospect of nailing a weirdo killer before he harmed anyone else and disappointed that she had not been able to talk to Maura further. Knowing that every day on the job could be her last was something Jane accepted in stride; possibly having someone who might get left behind, to hear _that _knock on her door, added a bitter poignancy.

Pushing morbid thoughts away with ease and speed of long practice, Jane zipped up her boots and went to the kitchen to retrieve her badge and sidearm. Clipping them, she saw Maura come down the stairs from her bedroom, dressed somewhat practically in a beige sweater and dark slacks, low-heeled loafers on her feet. Over her shoulder was a slim satchel; Jane recognized it as Maura's upscale answer to the traditional "black bag."

"No, Maura!"

"Jane—"

"Nobody's dead yet, and I'm not letting you get in the middle of a potentially dangerous situation," commanded Jane.

"I'm a doctor," replied Maura, just as implacable. "If we're able to interrupt him before he kills someone, they may need medical attention. Even…a couple of minutes before the EMTs arrives could be critical. Besides," she added, reaching into her bag and pulling out the nunchakas, "I'm _packing."_

Jane sighed. It was hard enough refusing any request of Maura's, worse when she was making a logical argument (_which is almost always, _Jane reflected). "Alright, but if I tell you to stay in the car, _stay in the car." _ Jane whipped out her handcuffs for emphasis. "Don't make me arrest you for obstruction and haul you back to jail!"

Thankfully, Maura responded in the spirit of the witticism, adopting a fair-to-middlin' facsimile of the classic Edward G. Robinson sneer. "That joint couldn't hold me, sister!" she snarled as she went through the front door.

Jane rolled her eyes, trying hard to stay serious while her friend went gung-ho. "Whatever, Ma Barker."

* * *

The location Jane got from Operations was in the middle of the business district, three blocks from where Shirley Beckwith was killed. Jane and Maura got out of the car and looked around at the concrete-and-glass jungle surrounding them. So far, they had see no sign of anybody wearing a cape, cloak or even a long duster. There were other units in the vicinity, but for the moment Jane and Maura were on their own.

Jane looked up in disgust at the cloudy night sky. Even with streetlights, the illumination in this area was far from optimal… "Where's a nice big full moon when you need it?"

"I think that's for werewolves," muttered Maura absently, her eyes constantly scanning around the buildings and the alleyways. "He's looking for somebody to accost who's out here alone, at this time of night…where would she come from?"

Jane scrutinized the surrounding buildings. Most of them were dark, normal business hours having ended hours before. "'She'…was that a guess, Dr. Isles?"

"I was merely stating a statistical probably, Detective Rizzoli," countered the medical examiner in their much-cherished game. "Jane, that office building." She pointed out an eight-story building that had lights behind windows on the fifth floor. If she were a guessing person, Maura would guess that somebody was working late.

Jane nodded, thinking the same thing. Would the perpetrator try to attack her inside the building? _No. Too much chance of somebody interrupting him. He's going to attack her when she's going for her car; he's seen that M.O. work for him before, he's not going to change it. So…where would her car be? _She spotted a multi-story parking structure adjacent to the building with the late-night lights. "Maura, that's it!" She ran towards the car, pointing to the parking structure.

Maura slid into the passenger seat, buckling her belt even as her doubts surfaced. "Jane, what if we're wrong?"

Jane could not entirely suppress an ironic grin. "Welcome to _my _world."

* * *

Harold crouched behind one of the few cars on the level he had selected. He had silently observed this woman for several nights, her working late, walking to the Toyota Prius that she always parked on the third level of the parking structure, which was connected to the office building where she was employed. He had taken the precaution of removing several overhead lights from their sockets, giving the parking level a dark, almost tomblike air.

He had parked his van several yards away from her car, close enough to be handy but not so much as to arouse any suspicions from her. Still crouching, he stretched his leg muscles in preparation.

Harold could hear footsteps, the kind made by high heels on concrete, come closer. Just a few more seconds… He gathered his cape around him.

_She'll be so pleased with me._

* * *

Jane drove through the parking structure, keeping her speed as low as she could stand it, trying to look everywhere at once while still driving a vehicle. Maura had rolled down her window, trying to see and hear anything besides the squealing of tires against concrete.

Similar thoughts ran through their minds: this might be a wild goose chase, the cape-wearer spotted and phoned in to BPD might be nothing more than a solitary opera patron, they were in the wrong place, the murder might be happening while they were messing around in this parking structure… Jane accepted this as part of the nature of police work, and Maura's scientific stoicism was well equated with the concept of dead ends. They gritted mental teeth and pressed on, just as…

"What was that?" Jane said, stopping the car as soon as the sound she heard – or thought she heard – registered in her brain. "Another car tire, or…"

"No! It was a woman's scream!" replied Maura. "One level up… I think!"

Jane pressed the accelerator, turning the wheel even as she keyed her phone. "This is Rizzoli, Victor 825, possible 187 in progress at this address!" She knew Dispatch would get the address of the parking structure from the specialized app in her smartphone.

Maura, for her part, knew that the ability to determine the source of sound by direction without any visual cues was generally rather poor; however, she decided mentioning this to Jane at the moment was, to put it mildly, counterproductive. As the car rounded onto another ramp leading to an upper level, she noticed something that put such thoughts out of her mind… "It's awfully dark in this part of the structure; I thought city ordinances mandated—"

"There!" cried Jane. Fifty feet ahead of the car were two people, one crouched over the other with his hands on the throat of the person laying on the concrete. As the headlights started to glow on the two figures, the kneeling one pulled the cape he was wearing quickly over his face and started to move away. Jane only got a general impression of a Caucasian male, mid- to late-thirties, medium build with dark hair, before she momentarily lost sight of him.

Slamming on the brakes, Jane leaped out from behind the wheel, drawing her sidearm. "Police – FREEZE!" She heard the other door open and Maura scrambling out as Jane ran towards where the attempted strangler was running. Jane could draw a bead on him, but he was apparently unarmed and not immediately a threat. Shooting at someone like that was at best a grey area. He burst through a stairway access door and was gone.

Maura ran towards the erstwhile victim, a young African-American woman in her mid-twenties, dressed in business-casual couture. She hadn't moved from where she was lying; Maura quickly knelt down and pressed her hand to her neck. "I got a pulse, weak, thready! _She's not breathing!_"

Jane's desire to help the victim, and make sure Maura was safe, fought with the dire need to chase the would-be killer. Flashing lights and a siren undulating off concrete walls solved part of her problem. "Uniforms, Maura: one stays with you, send the other one to back me up!" Seeing Maura's acknowledging nod, Jane tore off through the door.

Her first instinct was that he went down, trying to escape at the street level, but a glance upward showed him ascending towards the roof. _Now why'd he do that? _She wondered as she pounded up after him. Then echoes from below her answered that question: patrolmen had already shown up and were climbing the stairs from that direction. The only way out for Count Dumbass was up.

Jane resolutely continued to climb flights of stairs, even as the perpetrator continued upward. She had to hand it to him: he was making such good time that Jane, model of physically-fit female that she was, was not gaining appreciably on him. Controlling her breathing helped, but she knew she was going to feel this workout tomorrow.

Less than a minute after the perp banged open the roof door, Jane arrived, drawing her sidearm again because she couldn't see him. Bracing against the doorframe, she first aimed her weapon to the right, then the left, seeing nothing. Jane burst past the doorframe, spun and pointed her gun at the top of the doorframe. He wasn't there, either.

The roof, not very well illuminated, had plenty of electrical service boxes and conduits to hide behind. Jane tried to slow her breathing even more, to give her hearing a chance to work for her. She worked her way past a service junction, finger light on the trigger. Nothing. She grit her teeth in frustration and suppressed fear; she debated taunting him with a "Not so tough, are ya?" quip, but instinct told her that this weirdo wouldn't do the decent thing and shout back, giving her his location in the process.

A sudden movement to her right made her spin and bring her weapon up… He was not rushing towards her; in fact, his route was at right-angles to where Jane stood pointing her gun. He was running full-tilt towards the edge of the roof…

"Police officer! _Stop!" _Jane ran after him, again feeling constrained against firing at an unarmed man, even if he was a nutjob wearing a cape and acting out some Christopher Lee fantasy. _Where the hell's he going? A ladder, an old fire escape on the side of the -_

The perp wasn't slowing down to climb down a ladder; if anything, he increased his speed as the edge of the roof drew nearer…

"No! _Don't do it!" _Jane pumped her legs up and tried to catch him, knowing it was impossible even as he raised his arms and his cape flew up like the wings of a, well, bat…

…and he leaped into the air, seeming to float with inhuman grace, time apparently foreshortening as he flew across the space between the parking structure and another building across an alley…

Landing in a crouch, the perp let out an involuntary "Oof!" but quickly recovered, running into the darkness on that roof.

Jane, meanwhile, was so busy watching the incredible sight of her quarry nimbly leap that she almost forgot to stop running into time. Her momentum carried her to the very edge of the parking structure; only a desperate windmilling of arms kept her from overbalancing and making a huge mess in the alley several stories below. She tried to spot the killer, but he vanished in the shadows on the roof.

Jane measured the distance with her eyes from where she stood to the roof of the other building; even with a running start, she didn't think she would be able to make it. _But he…I saw…he… _Her brain kept trying to deny what her eyes had seen.

A shout from behind her alerted Jane to the arrival of a patrolman. She answered abstractedly, not taking her eyes off the abyss the killer had managed to traverse. The patrolman joined her. "Detective Rizzoli?" Jane nodded in response, still not quite trusting herself to speak. "What the hell happened?" He looked down at the alley, perhaps expected to see A Take-Out Order of Street Pizza, then looked back at Jane in complete confusion. "Where'd this guy go?"

Jane pointed at the rooftop of the other building. "He _flew!"_

"…What?" replied the patrolman looking back and forth between Jane and the other rooftop.

* * *

The ambulance had arrived after the patrol car. Maura had determined that the young woman's larynx had sustained severe trauma from the attempted strangulation; she had to perform an emergency tracheotomy, something she had only done once before. Fortunately, she had all the equipment on hand and her technique was improved from before.

The EMTs loaded the unconscious woman on the gurney and into the back of the ambulance. Now that her patient was ready to be transported to the hospital, Maura let herself shake a bit. She spotted Jane coming back with a rather bewildered-looking patrolman.

Maura rushed up to Jane. "Are you all right?" Jane nodded dumbly. Noticing this apathy but pressing on, she continued: "She's going to Mass General, but she should be all right; we got here before he could completely asphyxiate her." Maura noted Jane's unusual silence again; clearly, something had shaken the almost unflappable detective. "Jane, what happened? Did he get away? How?"

Jane looked at Maura with an expression that sent shivers down the medical examiner's spine. "He…_flew!"_

Maura blinked. "…What?"

* * *

**To be continued!**


	6. Chapter 6

**Hey, gang! Sorry this has taken me so long - training for a new job takes up time and CPU cycles! :) I hope you like this part: some inner monologues here and there, I hope not too boring. I'm trying to lead up to Rizzles and make it seem organic.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter 6

"He jumped _this?" _Lieutenant Cavanaugh asked, his usual irascibility not improved by his having to be rousted out of bed at the late hour. He stood on the roof with Jane, Maura and a couple of uniforms.

Jane nodded, very aware that she was on the hot seat…again. "Yes, sir. He took a running start, "she pointed to approximately where the cape-wearing freak started off, "and took off from here." She flung her arm to indicate the abyss her quarry had managed to jump.

Cavanaugh, for his part, had a hard time believing it; on the other hand, given that the perp wasn't currently being sponged into a body bag several stories below, he couldn't come up with a more convincing explanation of why he wasn't in custody. Plus, he had to consider the source: Jane Rizzoli was a world-class pain-in-the-keister, but she was arguably the sharpest razor in his barber shop. She had her faults, but hallucinations did not number among them.

He looked again at the gap between buildings. "How far across is this, anyway?"

"Seventeen feet, four inches," piped Maura, her grin fading slightly at the incredulous looks given her by her colleagues. "I…asked one of the crime-scene techs to measure it for me. Y'know, that's well within the range of human ability for the running long-jump; the world record is over twenty-nine feet. Plus," she continued, pointing at the other roof, "the fact the other roof is lower – by about three feet, judging by eye – than this one, would have facilitated –"

"Not now, Doctor, if you please," Cavanaugh cut in wearily. "What else to do we have?" he continued, addressing Jane. Maura crossed her arms and sighed. She was just about to get to the good part.

"It looks like he took out several of the overhead lights on the floor near her car," Jane replied to Cavanaugh's question. "We have uniforms canvassing the area around the attack, looking for a van. If what Maura said about the equipment used to drain Shirley Beckwith's blood is true, and assuming he doesn't want to carry his next victim very far, there should be a van somewhere in this parking structure."

As it turned out, there were four vans parked in the structure within a reasonable walking distance, at least for someone carrying a limp body. Detective Frost, who had himself arrived with the crime-scene techs, verified three of the vans to be registered to people employed in the adjacent office building. He could not find a registration for the fourth van, a white panel job marked with some sort of non-descript blue logo.

"These plates don't match this van," Frost announced, having checked the number on his handy tablet. "They were reported stolen off an blue SUV two weeks ago."

Cavanaugh raised an eyebrow to Jane, who matched his expectant expression. "Sounds like probable cause to me." Trying the doors, Cavanaugh found them locked. "No good. Okay, who has a crowbar here?"

"Lieutenant? Allow me…" Maura stepped forward, digging into her satchel. Before Cavanaugh could protest, Maura had dug a pair of small, arcane tools out and set out to attack the van's rear door lock. A platoon of bemused grins dropped as an audible click came from the door, signalling Maura's success.

Cavanaugh gave Jane an indecipherable look, prompting the detective to shake her head and mutter, "Don't ask, sir."

"Don't tell, Rizzoli." Nodding to Frost, who waved Maura to step back, Cavanaugh motioned to Jane to open the door. She and her partner drew their sidearms; it was highly unlikely that there were someone in the van, but taking chances of that sort was not a habit the Boston Police Department encouraged. Frost grabbed a flashlight from a nearby patrolman and held it up along with his gun.

On a silent cue from Jane, Frost opened the door and shined his flashlight into the van. A quick look confirmed that nobody was inside the van… but it was far from empty.

A metal table stood lengthwise inside the van, bolted to the floor. Mounted on side brackets next to the table was a mass of machinery and tubing connected to a clear glass bottle. An odd, somewhat medicinal smell emanated from the interior of the vehicle.

Jane felt an icy hand clutch her chest; her hands tingled in the vicinity of her scarred palms. She gripped her gun harder to keep her hands from shaking. _Don't be ridiculous, Rizzoli, _she told herself, trying to strap on her metaphoricals so she could climb in the van to do a prelim, _Charles Hoyt is not in there, waiting to grab you, he's dead, dead and buried, goddamn son-of-a-bitch Hoyt, I killed you, I'd kill you again, I'd kill you if you weren't already dead already dead ALREADY DEAD—_

_"Easy," _Cavanaugh warned, one hand on her shoulder, the other firmly on her weapon. Taking a breath, she collected herself and holstered her piece. "We'll have this impounded and examined at headquarters. I can't imagine anybody else having a contraption like this, other than our guy. You and Frost, go home. Dr. Isles," he raised his voice to address the medical examiner, "make sure Detective Rizzoli gets home. " The lieutenant waved to the uniforms and technicians gathered around the van, then moved off towards his car.

Jane swallowed, then started walking after the lieutenant, intending to explain herself, apologize for nearly losing her fudge at the sight of the inside of the van. Before she went a half dozen steps, Cavanaugh stopped and spun around to face her. "Rizzoli: I _will _see your report, on my desk, by ten a.m. _Sharp." _His fierce Irish mien was mitigated by the merest hint of a smile.

"Yes, sir," answered Jane, keeping a smile off her face with great effort. As she watched him walk away, Jane knew Cavanaugh still trusted her by the way he refused to cut her any slack.

_Now, if I can just keep him from dating my mother…!_

* * *

Maura insisted on driving the two of them back to her house, Jane being able to muster only a token protest as she was way too tired. The detective was uncharacteristically quiet during the drive. At first Maura put it down to simple fatigue, the aftermath of an adrenaline rush from the foot pursuit.

_No. Something is bothering her. _Maura wrestled with the notion of leaving her friend along with her thoughts and respecting her privacy for about five seconds. It put up a better fight than usual, but the outcome was never in doubt. "Hey. Talk to me."

"…uh, okay. There's, uh, a one-eyed yellow idol to the north of…um…"

"Katmandu, and I was talking about whatever it is you're thinking about." Maura concentrated on steering the car towards Beacon Hill.

From somewhere, Jane mustered a smile. "Smelled the wood burning, didja?"

"_Jane."_

"He _flew, _Maura!" Jane exploded. Only the safety belt kept her in her seat. "He… he flew to the other rooftop!"

Maura had to consciously restrain the urge to close her eyes in exasperation, given she was driving through the streets of Boston. "He _jumped, _okay? It was, to say the least, an impressive jump, but well within the limits of human ability. We're not chasing some supernatural creature. He's human, certainly, extremely mentally disturbed, most likely, and with surprising athletic prowess – but he is not a vampire."

"Maura," replied Jane with weary resolve, "I saw what I saw." And with that, the conversation ended.

* * *

Back at Maura's townhouse, Jane shoved her ordnance back into the usual drawer. Maura watched her friend as she moved in almost in a daze. Jane's dogged persistence enabled her to be an excellent detective, but it also induced her to run herself ragged.

"Do you want a beer?" asked Maura as Jane stood by the kitchen island, seeming to sway in an imaginary breeze.

The brunette shook her head. "Bed," she mumbled, then after a second's consideration, added, "Shower."

"In that order?" quipped Maura. Jane rolled her eyes but otherwise did not deign to answer, moving off towards the guest bathroom. Maura got British strawberries out of her refrigerator for Bass, took Jo Friday out for a quick trip around the nearest tree and then retreated to the master bath for her own nightly ablutions.

Washing the makeup from her face, Maura gazed at herself in the mirror. The discoloration from where the inmate had punched her had faded almost to invisibility. Maura inspected the faint freckles that dusted her cheeks, the lines under her eyes that deepened every so often when she was not looking. She worked a modest amount of La Mer moisturizer into the valleys of her skin.

Maura could admit, without much embarrassment and false modesty be damned, that she was an above-average-looking woman at thirty-seven. She had started to worry in recent years about not staying as attractive as she had been in her twenties; however, the discovery of her birth mother, and how striking Hope Martin was at fifty-five, gave her increased confidence of her sex appeal for years to come.

_On the other hand, given how "well" that aspect of my life has been going lately – _With the abruptness of a roundhouse slap, Maura shut off that line of thinking, assigning it to the _#boring _and _#depressing _hashtags and filing it away…for the moment. Jane, with her strange, oxymoronic combination of circumlocution and bluntness, had more or less pinpointed the root of her problems: self-pity.

_"A lot of people in this world, in this __**town," **_Jane had said a few nights ago, her tongue slightly loosened by an extra bottle of Spucky's, "_are far less well off than you. M'not even talking just money-wise, here; most people are in a job they hate, working with people they could really do without, or have no one who they can go to bitch about All Of The Above. __**You, **__on the other hand, are doing the kind of work you do, not because you need it to pay bills and buy groceries, but because you want to make a difference. And that, my friend, is __**rare."**_

Maura smiled at her reflection in the mirror; if someone as strong and self-reliant as Jane Rizzoli could consider Maura Isles her best friend, maybe she wasn't a complete lost cause.

In her walk-in closet, that Jane had jokingly dubbed "The Vault," Maura changed into silk pajamas. She had noted absently the shower being turned off in the guest bathroom some minutes before; she hoped Jane would get to sleep all right. The sight of that van with its macabre equipment had probably stirred up bad memories for the detective. Maura considered going downstairs just to check…

…and stopped dead as she exited her closet. Jane, dressed in a baggy Red Sox jersey and loose shorts, was sitting precariously on the edge of Maura's bed, head down, clearly half-asleep. _She's slept-walked up here, _Maura decided. Climbing lightly on the other side of the bed, she gently pulled Jane back to lay her down.

"Wha- Um, Maura?" Jane mumbled as her eyes flickered open. "What are you – how'd I get here?" The brunette started to rouse herself.

"Shhhh, it's okay, just go to sleep."

"'kay." Jane adjusted herself to lay on her side, her back against Maura's front. Maura, at first surprised Jane would adopt such an intimate posture, draped an arm over and let it nestle beside delicious curves. She felt Jane's breathing slow, her own tension draining out of her body like warm oil. She felt an urge to nuzzle Jane's neck and freshly-washed hair, her eyes raising open halfway as she recognized the incongruity of the impulse. What was she feeling? Why was she feeling it?

"M'ra?" Jane's question seemed to come down the long dark tunnel of sleep.

"Yeah?"

"…love you." Jane spooned even closer towards Maura as she fell completely asleep.

Maura's breath caught in her throat, and she wasn't even sure why. "I…I love you, too."


	7. Chapter 7

**Here's the next part of the story. Various warnings: I may be editing this slightly (I have a beta reader but I can't wait anymore!), there's a little strong language at the end, and you should probably not be drinking coffee while reading this on a laptop. Spit-takes on keyboards are nobody's friend.**

**Enjoy!**

* * *

Chapter 7

Maura waited for Jane to come downstairs; she turned on CNN for background. In the portafilter she packed a measure of Medaglia D'Oro Espresso. Her satin kimono kept her cozy-warm.

By mutual, if unconscious, agreement, Jane and Maura had steered clear of any discussion of the previous night's sleeping arrangements. She had just finished making two cups when a news item caught her attention; it nearly made her drop the cups.

Jane hurried downstairs in response to Maura's almost-frantic call, already dressed in her work clothes. Jo dashed, her ears perked, catching all of the activity. "Maura? What's all the –" Looking towards the LCD screen, Jane skidded to a halt, flabbergasted. She tucked her red shirt into her black jeans.

_O_ver a series of photos of the previous night's crime scene, a male voice spoke, "_Boston Police officials have made no comment on the record, but sources close to the department have confirmed that there does appear to be a, quote, vampire-like killer, unquote, stalking the streets of Boston." _The caption at the bottom of the screen read: BLOODSUCKER OF BEANTOWN. "_There is one confirmed fatality and an unconfirmed report of another victim who is currently hospitalized. Community leaders are understandably upset but are calling for calm, and ask anyone with information—"_

The report cut off as Jane hit the remote with a savage stab at the button. "I cannot believe that!"

Taking a deep breath, Maura tried to calm her friend. "We knew this was going to get out sooner or later; I'm just hoping the leak didn't come from—"

Jane blurted in her whiny-toddler voice: _"I hate when they call us "Beantown!"_

Since there didn't seem to be any answer for that, Maura decided to change the subject. "I can make you something to eat, if you want," she began with a diffident wave of her hand.

The brunette shook her head**,** wild curls cascading back and forth. "I need to take Jo Friday home before I head up to the precinct. I'll get breakfast at the café; Ma's probably dying to foist Bunny Pancakes on me again. Plus, I gotta write up that report for Cavanaugh." Jane held her coffee with both hands and drank. "_And _we have to check on the girl Count Dumbass tried to kill last night, see if she can give an accurate description."

Maura nodded. "I need to shower anyway. I'll meet you at the café. Then I have to check in with the crime lab; they're looking at the van and the equipment inside." She turned to head upstairs, still carrying her coffee cup.

_Ooookay, something is definitely up, _Jane mused as she retrieved her gun and other accoutrements from the kitchen drawer. Funny thing was, Maura didn't seem depressed like yesterday. If Jane could stick a label on the doctor's emotional state, she would have selected "agitated." _What the hell is __**she **__agitated about? She's not the one falling in love with her best friend…_

_Jo crooked her head, wagging her tail._

* * *

"Hello, baby!" Angela Rizzoli sang out at the sight of her eldest child sauntering into the Division One Café attached to BPD headquarters. "Need some breakfast?"

"Sure**,** Ma." While her mother continuously doting on her could get wearying, especially when setting Jane up on dates with men whose biggest qualifications were 1) being better-looking than the Hunchback of Notre Dame and 2) having a pulse, mornings were those times when Jane could really look forward to Angela smothering her with nutritional love.

"It'll be just a minute," Angela said as Jane took a seat in the middle of the cafe, pouring a cup of coffee and setting it down on the table. Lowering her voice a little, even the joint was hardly jumping, she asked, "Is Maura coming in?"

"Yeah, I think she's wanting breakfast," Jane replied offhanded, emptying a couple of Sweet 'n Low packets in, before seeing Angela's expression. "Ma…. You need to give Maura a little more time."

Angela seemed to sag, partly in melancholy, partly in exasperation. "Jane, I know I hurt Maura…I, I'd give anything to undo what I did. But how long am I going to have to keep apologizing for—"

"_Don't apologize," _Jane growled. "All that does with her is keep it in the front of her CPU Google-Brain file…thingy," she finished lamely as she ran out of faux technical terms. "Let her work it through at her own pace." She smiled at her mother with stern affection. "Maura's not like you and me: she doesn't get mad at the drop of a hat…but it also takes her longer to forgive."

Angela nodded. "I'll go get your breakfast," she said as she headed for the kitchen. Jane sipped her coffee, noting absently the number of furtive looks she was getting from various uniforms and plainclothes walking through and past the café. Her musings as to what this silent scrutiny might be about was interrupted by the arrival of Maura in a head-turning maroon dress and matching blazer.

Sitting down opposite Jane, Maura glanced around the café, obviously checking the place for prying ears, and fixed her friend with a baleful gaze. "I'm afraid we are the subject of some rather…silly gossip," she stage-whispered.

"What else is new—wait, is this about last night?" Jane's gaze wandered over to two young uniforms, whom Jane was sure neither of them were entirely dry behind the ears, standing over by the coffee urns. One of them demurred getting a cup, stating in a bad Eastern European accent: "I do not dlink…coffee!" The other snickered as he laid a bill on the counter next to the cash register; the two chuckled until they noticed Jane locking her trademark I-eat-rookies-for-breakfast-with-jam look on them. Desisting in their laughter, the two uniforms decided to exit the café like, if one could dare say it, bats out of hell.

Jane's weary ire was definitely not helped by the sight of Maura biting her lower lip in an effort to not to laugh. "Sorry," muttered the medical examiner. "I overheard two of my lab techs discussing whether the 'vampire' sparkled or just _poofed _into a cloud of dust when you 'staked' him! I think I'm going to have a little talk with my staff…"

"What is _wrong _with everybody?" Jane growled in disbelief, her head sinking into her left hand. "It's not like we haven't had, yknow, weird cases before. That "witch-burning," or the voodoo one…"

"Those were really interesting," countered Maura. "A kind of… break, in the routine."

Jane's scoff was interrupted by the arrival of Sgt. Korsak. The older detective gave a quick "Morning!" to Jane, then did an exaggerated take at Maura. Peering intently, and ostentatiously, at her neck, Korsak asked in a solicitous tone, "Are you feeling all right, Doctor? You look a little pale!"

Unflappable, Maura smiled at Korsak. "_Very _funny, Sergeant." Jane settled for a half-hearted sneer.

Angela bustled out of the kitchen with two plates in hand and headed for their table. "Good morning, Vince!" she greeted Korsak. Setting a plate down before Jane and Maura, Angela turned to the latter, slightly guarded. "Good morning…Maura."

"Hello, Angela." To an average observer, and maybe even to Sergeant Korsak, the greeting might have genuinely polite, but Jane could detect the definite coolness in Maura's tone and expression. Judging by Angela's carefully-concealed crestfallen reaction, her mother picked up on it too. "And, thank you," Maura added a little belatedly, indicating her plate.

"Sure." Turning to Korsak, Angela asked, "Can I get you anything, Vince?"

"Just an English muffin, buttered, thanks."

Angela turned to go to take the order to the kitchen**,** then turned back suddenly. "Oh, I almost forgot. Here." Reaching into her apron's pocket, she extracted two small bundles of string and handing them out to Jane and Maura. "I'll get you one, Vince, in just a minute."

Watching her mother leave, Jane untangled the bundle to find a small white clove tied at the end of the loop of string. Sniffing it, she confirmed it was…

"Garlic?!"

Korsak's chuckling did nothing to help the situation…and then came Maura's dreaded Google Mouth. "Garlic has significant medicinal value. It helps prevent accumulation of cholesterol in the bloodstream; the Cherokee also used it as an expectorant for coughs and croup; it's been found to enhance thiamin absorption, and therefore reduces the likelihood for developing the thiamin deficiency _beriberi—"_

"—and it wards off these human-sized mosquitoes that keep sucking on people!" Korsak finished with another chuckle. His laughter diminished as Jane fixed another death-glare on him. She had the feeling her patented Death-Glare Machine was going to break down by the end of the day.

"I'm well aware of the legend about garlic warding off vampires," Maura began again, as Jane looked down at her pancakes. Strangely, they didn't look like the usual bunnies; instead of the usual ears, there were protrusions on each side that looked suspiciously like bat wings. Some sort of chocolate brown spread at the top simulated a hairline, while an inch below two chocolate chips, placed where eyes would sit, another line of spread stood in for a mouth. The sliced almonds, usually subbing for buckteeth on the bunny pancakes, were further apart and sharpened to a point. And was that strawberry syrup trickling down from one corner of the mouth?

Had the plate not been directly below her, Jane would have slammed her head against the table to vent her frustration. She settled for grabbing her knife and fork and performing horrific mutilation on her breakfast until it no longer resembled a vampire. Maura, for her part, concentrated on eating her breakfast without laughing, thereby spraying her table-mates with partially-chewed pancakes.

Stabbing a "bloody" piece of dismembered vampire, Jane began eating with furious gusto. "Cannot believe this. The whole city goes batsh—uh, because some guy wants to play Christopher Lee on Boston Common!"

"Those were some good movies!" Korsak countered, looking up as Angela returned with his breakfast (while studiously avoiding eye contact with her irate daughter). "Now, if we are talking old-school, you have to back to the classic: _Bela."_

"I've always thought Frank Langela deserved more recognition for his portrayal of Count Dracula," offered Maura. Korsak nodded.

"That's a good one!" Angela said as she refilled everyone's coffee. "Now Jane, she always liked that funny one, with George Hamilton…"

"Ma!" Jane growled around a mouthful.

"_What? _You laughed your…head off, when you were seven years old." Angela was about to elaborate, but the look her daughter was giving her made her decide discretion was the better part of family memories. She glanced at Maura with a she's-all-yours look before returning to the kitchen.

Jane finished her breakfast, letting her knife and fork drop to the plate with noisy clangs. "Gawd, can this day get any more—"

"Va-_nilla!" _

At the sound of the nickname, Jane rolled her eyes towards The Man Upstairs. "Oh, _thank you." _ Seeing Maura was about to make a comment on the timing of the new arrival, Jane narrowed her gaze and pointed a finger: _Don't even. _She turned towards the café entrance... and nearly fell out of her chair.

Raymond "Rondo" Washington, ex-R&B singer, itinerant street-person, erstwhile mentor to underprivileged youth, occasional "guardian angel" of the bus lines and Jane's confidential informant, strode into the café looking like a cross between a survivalist (minus the assault weapons) and the title character in _Van Helsing. _Army surplus web-belts held cut-down baseball bats sharpened to deadly points. _Those better not be from Fenway! _Jane muttered internally Rondo's old suede duster was festooned with crucifixes; even the crown of his battered fedora sported a small cross.

"Oh, my," was Maura's only response.

"Hello, Vanilla," Rondo purred as he sidled up to the table, peering at Jane with only-mildly-requited affection. "Doctor," he greeted Maura, patting her hand paternally as she beamed at him. "Sgt. Friday!" he greeted Korsak, giving the senior detective a snappy salute.

"Wassup?" answered Korsak, holding his fist out to get a bump from Rondo. He was fond of Jane's C.I., partly because of the way he could easily get the brunette detective riled up.

"Rondo…" Jane finally found her voice, even as she wondered why in the blue hell she was opening this particular barrel of worms, "What are you supposed to be? Bear in mind it's three months to Halloween."

"Hey, I watch the news…every morning at the TV display at the Radio Shack." He squared his shoulders and grabbed his lapels, assuming a semi-serious mein. "Rondo, reporting for duty to help eliminate the supernatural menace!"

"With those?" Maura asked, pointing to the bandolier of stakes under Rondo's coat.

"No, with the flamethrower he bought at Radio Shack!" Jane countered.

It took Maura a second, while she was formulating her response about how Radio Shack normally did not sell flamethrowers (and certainly not to unlicensed users), before she figured out her friend was being sarcastic. "No, I meant that the stakes might not necessarily be effective."

Korsak piped in, "Yeah, that's why we replaced them with _guns _as standard issue, back in the seventies." That quip earned him the dreaded Double Death Glare from Jane and Maura.

"I meant that staking through the heart is not necessarily the preferred way to kill a vampire," continued Maura. "It depends on the subject's national origin."

Rondo turned to the medical examiner. "No kiddin'?"

Jane drawled at him, "Now you've done it."

Sure enough, the medical examiner was in full flow. "For instance, while staking the vampire through the heart would be effective for the Albanian and Hungarian variants, the best way to kill one of Irish origin would be to pile stones on the grave. The Serbian type, called a _vlkoslak_, can only be killed by cutting off the toes and driving a nail through the neck."

Rondo produced a notepad and stubby pencil. "Got any more?"

One would have thought he had offered to buy Maura an entirely new wardrobe. "Of course!" she answered brightly. "The Bavarian _nachtzehrer_ should be dispatched by placing a coin in the mouth, then decapitation by ax. If the vampire is from Saxony, you kill it by putting a lemon in its mouth; if it's from Crete, you boil the head in vinegar –"

"This is starting to sound," Jane broke in, "like the beginnings of a dynamite luncheon."

Korsak added, "How about one from Poland?"

"You bury it in the ground, face down."

The senior detective frowned. "Sounds like a bad Polack joke." Maura seemed scandalized at the accusation of making a cheap racial slur.

Jane, amused in spite of herself, decided to put the silliness to rest. "Rondo, look: this is not a real vampire we're chasing, okay? It's just some nutball who's seen too many movies, or read too many books. You and your crew want to keep any eye out, fine, but you are not to go all, y'know, Scooby Gang on me, alright?"

Rondo seemed mildly put out, but still scraped up a smile for his favorite Italian-American detective. "Sure thing, Vanilla. Ol' Rondo'll help out however he can. Oh!" He flipped through his notepad, then tore a page out to hand to Jane. "Y'might wanna check out this place."

Jane read the rather neat printing, noting absently that Rondo had astonishingly good penmanship: "'Dante's Inferno'? What's this? The address, is that in Roxbury?"

Rondo nodded. "It's a bookstore, deals with a lot o' weird stuff, occult, magic, voodoo, alternate religions, all that jazz."

Jane handed the paper to Korsak, who shrugged and handed it off to Maura. "Is this like that Spellbox store in Salem?" she asked, referring to a case a couple of years ago involving the murder of a couple of witches.

"Naw, that place is for the tourists. This guy is the real deal, Vanilla. Check him out; he might just have the 411 on this vampire dude. " Mumbling farewells to Maura and Korsak, with a slight leer at Jane, Rondo exited the café.

Korsak, meanwhile, was looking at his phone. "Huh. Somebody tried to make a delivery to Shirley Beckwith's place with a large package or container; uniforms took possession and are bringing it in."

"You think it might be a lead?" Maura inquired.

"Hope so," answered Korsak. "Won't know till we find out."

* * *

Jane managed to finish her report of the previous evening's incident in record time and with a whole three minutes to spare to get it on Cavanaugh's desk. Frost and Frankie had been dispatched to Massachusetts General Hospital to interview the second victim, Loretta DuQuesne by name, who hopefully would be able to improve on the generic description of the attacker.

Two uniformed officers carried a cardboard box, about three foot square, into the Homicide squadroom. Jane, having come back from dropping off her report in Cavanaugh's office, asked, "Is that on the Beckwith case?"

"Yes, ma'm – sir! Detective!" the older of the two rookies stammered. Jane's hatred of being called "ma'm" any time before her fiftieth birthday was well known in the department. Favoring the two younger officers with only a mildly scandalized glance, she signed for the delivery and dismissed them.

Korsak chuckled. "Now I know something's on your mind," he said as he came around his desk to stand next to Jane, looking at the box. "You actually let those two leave with their asses intact!"

Jane's sarcastic retort was interrupted by Maura's arrival. "Really, Sergeant, Jane rarely indulges in— Is that the delivery on Beckwith?"

"Yeah, we were just about to open it," Jane replied, forgetting to make her snide aside to Korsak in the process. The carton was heavily taped and marked with cautionary labels. "You got your utility blade?" she asked Korsak. By way of answer, he drew the pocketknife out of his jacket and handed it to her. Flicking the blade open, Jane sliced through several pieces of tape. She handed the knife back before popping open the top of the box.

Jane peered inside the box – and saw a pair of eyes staring back at her.

"_Jesus Christ sonofabitch!"_

* * *

**To coin a phrase: "What's in the boooox?!" To be continued...**


End file.
